In high school, I never took a class that didn’t have a H next to it unless there was no H option. By H, I meant honors. I had no qualms about people in college prep classes around me, but somehow I refused to do college prep because of some sort of inner pride. Pride, pride was my sin, even as I awkwardly sat in class as the shy one.
My mother pushed me to do extra-curriculars after school, so eventually I conceded to doing Student Council in sophomore year. I slowly crept out of my shell to expand into Spanish Club and Newspaper Club, which was just starting up and I was elected Editor in Chief by the advisor, who I still talk to and who got me my first job writing for a newspaper called the Patch. By senior year, I was far more outgoing than I was in freshman year, ready to go into college as a communications major.
My classes, honors classes, were sometimes hard, but mostly manageable. I labeled myself as “bad” at math and science early on, as those were the subjects I struggled in the most (it didn’t really matter that the classes for math and science that I was in were advanced by one year, I wasn’t doing as well as I was in English and electives). I struggled in Physics and dropped it half way through junior year, electing to pick up physiology senior year instead. I did better, I reasoned, with life sciences.
When I got into junior year and started to struggle in English, I dismayed. This was my thing, dammit. If I didn’t have this, what the heck did I have? My mom reacted by going to the superintendent about my teachers nonsensical grading policies (she gave grades that didn’t make much sense given the rubric and were highly subjective), I reacted by banging my head against the wall an hoping a random talent that I failed to see would fall out or that maybe my writing had just been blocked by the lack of head trauma I had instilled in recent years. English is my THING! GIVE IT BACK WORLD!
But now, I’m not so sure. Maybe I would like the predictability of numbers in accounting or the rush of an emergency room job. Maybe, I need to explore some. I know that I did well in writing and English classes that I have taken so far, and I enjoyed them enough, so maybe I will stick with that. But the future is uncomfortably undetermined, and it doesn’t seem to show any sign of becoming clear anytime soon.
My mother pushed me to do extra-curriculars after school, so eventually I conceded to doing Student Council in sophomore year. I slowly crept out of my shell to expand into Spanish Club and Newspaper Club, which was just starting up and I was elected Editor in Chief by the advisor, who I still talk to and who got me my first job writing for a newspaper called the Patch. By senior year, I was far more outgoing than I was in freshman year, ready to go into college as a communications major.
My classes, honors classes, were sometimes hard, but mostly manageable. I labeled myself as “bad” at math and science early on, as those were the subjects I struggled in the most (it didn’t really matter that the classes for math and science that I was in were advanced by one year, I wasn’t doing as well as I was in English and electives). I struggled in Physics and dropped it half way through junior year, electing to pick up physiology senior year instead. I did better, I reasoned, with life sciences.
When I got into junior year and started to struggle in English, I dismayed. This was my thing, dammit. If I didn’t have this, what the heck did I have? My mom reacted by going to the superintendent about my teachers nonsensical grading policies (she gave grades that didn’t make much sense given the rubric and were highly subjective), I reacted by banging my head against the wall an hoping a random talent that I failed to see would fall out or that maybe my writing had just been blocked by the lack of head trauma I had instilled in recent years. English is my THING! GIVE IT BACK WORLD!
But now, I’m not so sure. Maybe I would like the predictability of numbers in accounting or the rush of an emergency room job. Maybe, I need to explore some. I know that I did well in writing and English classes that I have taken so far, and I enjoyed them enough, so maybe I will stick with that. But the future is uncomfortably undetermined, and it doesn’t seem to show any sign of becoming clear anytime soon.